Using an Intersectional Approach

Originally Posted May 6, 2015Share:

Move to End Violence believes in finding solutions that end violence for all girls and women. This requires an intentional examination of how individuals experience multiple forms of oppression and how those forms of oppression compound upon one another.

An intersectional approach demands that we look for real solutions that take into account all aspects of one’s experiences of oppression as well as the systems that produce and perpetuate that oppression in order to understand how those forces intersect and create pernicious, deep-rooted barriers to justice.

Intersectionality simply came from the idea that if you’re standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you are likely to get hit by both.

– Kimberlé Crenshaw

Move to End Violence explicitly focuses on the need for an inclusive racial and gender justice analysis. We are committed to ensuring that the change we seek will help every last girl. To do this, we must build a movement that is committed to fostering racial equity as an element of gender justice, and to ending racism as a form of violence against girls and women.

To become a powerful racial and gender justice movement, participants in the Move to End Violence program explore how oppression operates on internalized, interpersonal, institutional, and structural levels. We begin by reflecting on how compounding oppressions may affect our own ability to lead and relate. With this understanding, we explore liberatory practices and new and profound ways of relating to ourselves and each other as we seek to create a world without violence.

Source: From “Intersectionality: the double bind of race and gender”, interview with Kimberlé Crenshaw on coining the term “intersectionality”, American Bar Association, Spring 2004.